From Ghetto to Garrison: A Chronic Case ofOrisunitis

Abstract

like Nigeria, and others, especially Europe and America. That is, what we have learnt to accept as normal suddenly struck me, for the first time, as being inconceivable in many of these other artistic worlds. That took me back to what we may reasonably catalogue as the birth pangs of postindependence theater in Nigeria, especially its survival strategies. Such strategies remain an aspect of theater sociology to which not much atten? tion is given. The mundane aspects of scrounging for funds, feed, and shelter, dodging the violence of politics and bigotry and somehow keeping afloat?or sinking?tend to fade into the realms of the superfluous once the finished product triumphantly straddles the boards?just as if they were no more than the processes of rehearsals. Then, a rather mixed experience in Kings ton, Jamaica, made me begin to wonder if, once given the Nigeriantype formative experience, one does not develop a form of creative masochism . . . but now I have got ahead of my story. Suffice it to reveal at this stage that I identified this perverse sensation, a niggling nostalgia? right in the midst of secure, opulent theater?for the taste of marginalized existence, as some kind of virus that, once absorbed, never completely leaves the bloodstream. I call it orisunitis, and may the Yoruba deity of Efe help all those who fall its victim!